Here are a few amazing facts about the Great Lakes and the waters of Wisconsin.
If you are interested in learning more about Wisconsin water and the Great Lakes, be sure to check out our Did You Know? and Wisconsin Water Facts pages for more fun facts and recommended reading.
- Just 3 percent of the world’s water is fresh water—2 percent is up in the polar ice caps; less than 1 percent is in freshwater lakes and streams.
- The Great Lakes contain an estimated 5,500 cubic miles of water—a fifth of all the liquid surface fresh water on Earth.
- Wisconsin has more than 15,000 lakes and 13,500 miles of navigable streams and rivers.
- Almost 3 percent of Wisconsin’s area—nearly a million acres —is lakes.
- Wisconsin has about 1.2 million billion gallons of water underground—if it were above ground, it would submerge the state in 100 feet of water.
- Wisconsin has more than 800 miles of Great Lakes coastline and nearly 200 miles of Mississippi River shoreline.
- There are 2,444 trout streams in Wisconsin—put end to end, they would stretch more than 956 miles.
- With 28 lakes, the Eagle River chain of lakes is the largest in the world.
- More than a third of Wisconsin’s population lives in the 11 counties forming its Lake Michigan coast; 24 percent live in the three southeast coastal counties of Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha.
- Wisconsin has more than 500,000 registered motorboats—about one for every 10 residents.
- Wisconsin uses an average of 56 gallons of water per day per person from public water supplies and private wells. The national per capita average is 90 gallons a day.
- Wisconsin has 1.4 million dairy cows, each of which needs to drink 45 gallons of water a day to produce 100 pounds, or 12 gallons, of milk.Wisconsin uses a total of more than 7 billion gallons of water per day.
- Rainfall over Wisconsin averages 32 inches annually; only 6-10 inches of it soaks in to become groundwater.
- Women were lighthouse keepers too. (From: The Women’s Great Lakes Reader By Victoria Brehm. Call No. 071109)
- Beluga whales are called “sea canaries” because of the variety of sounds they make. (From: Beluga Days: Tracking A White Whale’s Truths By Nancy Lord. Call No. 281275)
- Beavers can build a winter lodge in only two nights. (From: The Beaver: Natural History of a Wetlands Engineer By Dietland Muller-Schwarze and Lixing Sun. Call No. 281403
